Nothing Phone (3a) Pro Review: Just Keeps Getting Better

I have a complicated relationship with the company called Nothing and it's entirely in my own head. I spend most of my time with super premium, flagship phones like the Samsung Galaxy S25 Ultra, or the iPhone 16 Pro Max. I use midrange and budget phones every now and then, but not with anything I'd call regularity. Frankly, there are too many premium phones out there.

Then there's the tech brand Nothing and their Nothing phones. Most of what Nothing has launched so far can be considered mid-range at best, and yet I find them to be quite compelling. It's not the fact that they're midrange; it's the fact that Nothing took the time to design their products, and design them well. I've reviewed most of the phones that Nothing has launched thus far, and I have found each one to be simply delightful to use.

But it's a midrange phone, and I'm surrounded by premium phones. Why would I want to take a step back, or down and limit myself to the features and capabilities of a midrange phone? The answer is simply, "because it's a Nothing phone," and I want that to be enough. We might almost be there. I've been using a Nothing Phone (3a) Pro for one week, and this is my full review.

Before we get into it, it's important to note that if you live in the U.S. there are some hoops you need to jump through before you can actually buy this phone. Like previous releases, Nothing requires you to sign up for the beta hardware program before you can buy this phone in North America. Put simply, these phones haven't gone through carrier certification, so Nothing can't sell them here (not through normal means, anyway). Signing up for the beta program isn't hard, and once you do, you'll be able to buy the phone with no problem.

When I pop my T-Mobile SIM in, I get a message saying that the phone isn't entirely compatible with the network, so I shouldn't be surprised if the signals are not amazing. T-Mobile is typically pretty friendly to phones that are meant for overseas markets, so that message surprised me when it rolled in. All that being said, I was still able to use the phone on T-Mobile's network and at no point did I feel the connection was lacking, even in my neighborhood — a place where cellular signals go to die.

Nothing is launching two phones at Mobile World Congress 2025 — the Nothing Phone (3a) and the Nothing Phone (3a) Pro. I spent my review period using the Pro version, but I wanted to take a moment to talk about the differences between them. Two factors separate them.

The first is the design, and it's not at all hard to tell which phone is which. The Nothing Phone (3a) falls in line with the design language that has guided Nothing so far. The camera bump on the back is smaller and in the upper quadrant with a smooth curve running up to the lens. The Nothing Phone (3a) Pro is a pretty stark departure from that design language, instead adopting a huge, circular camera Island that houses all the lenses.

The design of the Nothing Phone (3a) Pro could turn out to be divisive. It feels like you're either going to love it, or you're going to hate it. If that feeling is a spectrum, I skew more toward the hate it side. Nothing phones up until now have prided themselves on their design. It feels like every decision made by Nothing has intention, as if you say this is why we designed this thing the way we did, and it makes perfect sense. The camera Island though feels more like a compromise – like "we had to design the camera bump this way for XYZ reason," as opposed to, "we wanted this to look this way." I may be in the minority for this, and I'm willing to accept that, but it just feels off.

Nothing introduced Essential Space along with an Essential button. This is a way to take information you need to remember and silo it all in one place. Want to grab a screenshot and attach a voice note (so you can remember why you snapped it)? You can also set a reminder to resurface that screenshot and voice note at a later date. Say your wife sends you a video of a product she wants. Hit the Essential button, grab a screenshot, and append a note saying what it is while at the same time setting a reminder for two weeks before her birthday to order it.

One thing I can say for sure about Essential Space is it's a super easy way to take a screenshot and add commentary to it. It's a one-handed operation. It's possible that over time, this could just be the new way you start taking screenshots, but it comes at a cost.

Using Essential Space with this device is supposed to work quite simply — it's supposed to find its way into your life and grow more helpful over time. If I'm being totally honest, I only had the phone for a week, and I struggled to find a use-case like that within that week. That being said I used the Essential key several times for similar tasks, and it worked as advertised. But Nothing goes further by indicating that the Essential Space will be organized by "AI." I'm very lukewarm on this at the moment because my review period was too short to properly evaluate that. Stir in the keyword "AI" — which has promised a lot of things over the past two years — and it's hard to judge.

One other thing that worries me about the Essential Space is how one would go about backing up or liberating that data. While the Essential button is a handy way to take a screenshot, there's no way to share that screenshot with others. I don't know about you, but 50% of the time at least, that's the next thing I do with a screenshot. There's also no way to get that data out of the Essential Space if, say, your phone breaks. If items in there essential, there needs to be a way to access them if something happens to your phone.

As for the rest of Nothing's software, I adore it. It's the best version of Android out there, hands down. My use case is not all that weird — all of my apps are in folders, and Nothing allows you to play with those folders to quite an extent. You can enlarge folders to 2x2 blocks and change the shape to a circle if you want (my preferred arrangement). Plus, you can set a cover icon over a folder which is fun. Nothing has a selection of icons in the "Nothing style" (read: dots).

Nothing also has a number of widgets, also in the dot matrix style. Some of my favorites include the weather app, News, Quick Look, which is like a calendar and weather together.

There's also Nothing's black and white icon pack which turns all of your icons greyscale. It's a really slick look, but it's also hard to adapt to since your brain is drawn to certain app colors, rather than the icons themselves. All the same, if you are looking to desensitize yourself from the bright pretty lights of your phone so you can use it less, that might be a good answer for you.

Other only thing I'm not terribly fond of is the software support. Nothing is promising three years of operating system updates and six years of security updates. That's not bad, but it's also not the seven years other manufacturers can promise.

Both the Nothing Phone (3a) and (3a) Pro come with a Snapdragon 7S Gen 3 processor which is a midrange processor. That being said, Midrange processors are getting pretty solid these days. Games like "Call of Duty: Mobile" run very well on the phone. On the Geekbench side of things, the phone clocks a 1,150/3,269 single and multi-core score which is fine for most tasks. If you plan to export 4K video often, you might need more power, but the Snapdragon 7 series is fine for more everyday tasks.

As for the battery, this phone is a champion. That's due to the massive 5,000 mAh battery it packs. That's the largest battery a Nothing phone has ever had, but it's also quickly becoming table stakes — at least in the Android world. I regularly got between a day and a half and two days on a full charge. Granted those were days spent at home on wi-fi, but all the same that's still impressive battery life, especially when compared to other midrange phones.

Nothing is swinging for the fences with this camera set, and I'm happy to report that for the most part (to continue the baseball metaphor) it makes really solid contact at the plate. First, let's discuss the hardware. Both phones are similar in the 8-megapixel ultrawide (with 120.2-degree field of view) and the 50-megapixel main camera with F/1.88 aperture. Where they diverge is in the telephoto. 

The Nothing Phone (3a) has a 50-megapixel 2x optical zoom lens while the Nothing Phone (3a) Pro has a 50-megapixel 3x optical zoom lens. This makes a pretty big difference between the two phones. A 3x capable lens means you get the options for .6x, 1x, 2x, 3x, and 6x zoom, all essentially lossless. That's a robust camera system.

Adam Doud/SlashGear

During the day things are very good. There's one minor quibble I found where a couple of my snapshots (above) simply failed to focus on my subject and instead captured a sharp background with a blurry subject. Granted, in all cases, the subject was a dog, so it's likely that a last minute movement threw the camera off. 

As long as your subjects are more of the two-legged variety, you should be fine. On the plus side, this was an exception, not a rule. On the downside, it's not something I've seen many (if any) other cameras do in a very long time. Do yourself a favor and where possible shoot a few extra shots, just in case.

When there's little light to work with, the cameras all work very well, with the exception of the ultrawide. It's not that ultrawide shots are bad, but they're not nearly as detailed and clean as shots with the other sensors. It's also important for your subjects to remain very still. Even the slightest movement causes things to go blurry.

Video is also not amazing at night, but only a handful of cameras can make a different claim. Typically what you'll see is the same judder from footsteps that most cameras get. This is not a problem that's going to be solved any time soon, I'm afraid. The same goes for the selfie camera. If you're shooting at night stay still, but even then highlights will get blown out, so keep clear of any light sources.

For what it is though, these cameras are very good. Add in the caveat of how much this phone costs, and they're excellent for this level. There is some work to do, but overall, you'll be satisfied with this camera.

The big caveat here is that like previous generations of the Nothing phone, the Nothing Phone (3a) and (3a) Pro are not optimized for the U.S. market. T-Mobile even threw an error at me indicating that the phone wasn't totally compatible with its network. Despite that, I had no trouble with any phone calls or data while using the phone in the suburbs of Chicago. However, that also means there's a small hoop to jump through in order to buy the phone — you need to enroll in Nothing's Beta program to qualify. It's not hard and it's free, but it's still an extra step.

The Nothing Phone (3a) Pro will be available to purchase in the U.S. in only the 12GB of RAM and 256GB of storage configuration in the grey and black colorways. The phone will cost $459.

Overall, this is an excellent phone in the midrange space, and should absolutely be one of the first phones you look at if your need falls in that neighborhood. You're getting a lot for that price. From the solid performance to excellent battery life and great cameras, there's little to not like here. I think the design might be polarizing, but that's entirely subjective. I also wonder how useful the Essential Space will ultimately prove to be, but that also depends on your use case.

Ever since the Nothing Phone (1) I've completed my review period wondering what the next Nothing phone will be like. That's also the case here. Nothing has continued to improve almost every aspect of every phone it has launched. That's the kind of consistency that's hard to master. It's almost as if everything that Nothing does is with intention. I certainly hope (and have no reason to doubt) that Nothing can keep up that ambition.